The Vanishing Throne (12 page)

Because this is how I long to kill you
.

A
ITHINNE COMES
to stand silently beside me. Black blood drips from my fingertips, splattered like ink across my clothes. It smells so strongly of iron and scorched metal, as if her sword had seared its way through.

The
mortair
's head is at my feet. The clockwork pieces are still gleaming, the fae metal more polished and bright than even the smoothest metal I've seen. The rest of its body is naught but a pile of obsidian armor. I would have admired the craftsmanship once. I would have wished for the talent to build something like this.

Now I don't care about the skill that went into creating the
mortair
. I don't care about the kill, not even a little. I don't give a damn.

All I can do is assess the
mortair
's interior parts, its pinions and gears and rivets. It's familiar. It's the same beautiful metal as the seal Aithinne had built. “You made them, didn't you?” I say flatly. “The
mortair
.”

Aithinne is so still, as if she isn't breathing at all. “Aye.” She sounds casual, as if we had just taken a walk through the park.

“Lonnrach sent one of your inventions to attack us,” I say, “and you don't sound the least troubled by it.”

“He knows the
mortair
are unparalleled at seeking.” She looks fondly at it. “I didn't build them to be terribly intelligent, but they're quite useful. I had them slaughter more than a dozen soldiers in mere seconds once. They're such loyal companions.”

I stare at her in shock. “Remind me never to anger you.”

Aithinne smiles serenely. “I was a very formidable”—she stops speaking abruptly, as if she was about to say something she shouldn't; then—“inventor.”

What the devil had she been about to say?

As if sensing my unasked question, Aithinne starts down the road, her movements slow from her injuries. “We need to keep moving. Lonnrach won't be far behind and we have to meet Kadamach outside the city.”

Kadamach
.
I think of kissing Kiaran, the desperate hard crush of his lips against my own. The heat rises to my cheeks just remembering it.

I follow her, my boots silent on the moss-covered cobblestones. “I thought Lonnrach needed me alive. Why would he send an assassin?”

“It was here to incapacitate me and find
you
,” Aithinne corrects. “You interfered with its second mission when you protected me.” She glances back at the remains of her invention, at the ink-black blood splattered across the
rubble. “Sending my own weapon was a message. A declaration to me.”

“How very sentimental,” I say as we make our way down the battered thoroughfare to the west end of the city. “I particularly enjoyed the part where it smacked you off your arse and clear across the square through a building.”

“Arse.” Aithinne's face breaks into a smile. “Your language is very expressive, especially the swearwords. I'm quite fond of fu—”

“Good god!” I glance at her. “What on earth has Kiaran been teaching you?”

“That one,” Aithinne says proudly, “I learned in the mounds. Part of it was below an inn where they played fiddles and sang vulgar songs with
that
word. You can put the sword away now.”

I hadn't realized I was still holding it. The blade drips black blood onto the street as we descend the long hill to Dean Village and the Water of Leith. The destruction is less apparent in this part of the city; it was already overgrown with trees and vines before the Wild Hunt.

I hold out the weapon to Aithinne, hilt first, but she shakes her head. “You keep it,” she says. “I should have given it to you before.”

“Why?” It's a powerful weapon to give away so lightly.

Before I can blink, she has my wrist in a viselike grip, pulling me to a halt. Gone is her smile, and with it our easygoing conversation—which had helped me forget, just for a moment, that we are surrounded by the ruins of my city.

Her eyes are so intense now, the way Kiaran's get just before a battle. Despite her humanlike body, she's still fae, and a faery's temper can come as quick and fierce as a storm. When I'm with Kiaran, I forget that about him sometimes; now I've done the same with his sister.

I should never forget. For my own protection, I can't make that mistake.

I try to pull away, to ignore the way my heart begins to race. She has me by the wrist.
By the wrist
. I can't stop the sudden flash of Lonnrach opening his mouth to bare his teeth, his grip hard, fingers over my pulse.

This is really going to hurt
.

As if sensing my memory, Aithinne's hold loosens. She tugs open my fingers until my palm is visible. My blood is smeared across my skin, mixed with the ink-black of the
mortair
.

“
Fuil nan aiteam chathach
,” she tells me firmly, her eyes never wavering from my own. As if willing me to understand. “This is the blood of your lineage. I made blades for all the Falconers, and now it's the only one of its kind left—just like you.” She presses the hilt into my hand and closes my fingers around it. “Consider it an apology.”

“For what?”

“For everything,” she says softly.

With that, she releases me and walks away, a slight limp to her stride. I follow her, my injuries beginning to ache now.

I have questions for her—so many that I don't know where to begin or what, really, to ask.
Later
, I decide. When we are out of immediate danger and I have time to think.

If such a time ever comes.

I stay silent as we travel through the village of Dean, where the grass between the cobbles reaches our knees and thick vines cover the destroyed buildings around us. Nature has claimed the once picturesque village, as if humans left this place centuries ago. Without anyone here to tame the ivy and foliage, the plants and trees have blossomed freely.

The few buildings left standing are overtaken, marble and stone cracked and broken under the onslaught of vines and roots. After all the trouble Edinburgh went through to make the city clean and immaculate, now it's a ruin.

I'm exhausted by the time Aithinne and I reach the Water of Leith. This place used to be surrounded by quaint stone cottages, raised up along the banks and nestled in the valley the river runs through. Now the buildings have gone, and only thick trees and the occasional traces of old walls remain.

This is where I met Kiaran. I so naively went on my first hunt—and found my intended victim, an
each-uisge
. I attacked the water-horse with an iron blade, the metal I discovered to be useless against fae. The creature nearly drowned me. Without Kiaran's intervention I would have died that night and the Falconer lineage would have gone extinct with me.

Right there
. I'm surprised by the memory, one less faded by Lonnrach's influence. Water rushes over my boots, but I pay it no mind.
That's where it happened
.

I haven't been here since that night, but I recognize the rock formations, how they jut out of the water near one of the falls. The water-horse attacked me there. I can still taste
the river water at the back of my throat, the grit of dirt on my tongue as I fought back.

“Falconer?”

I ignore Aithinne and slowly make my way along the bank until I reach the spot where the water-horse tried to pull me under. I disregard my aching muscles to crouch next to the rock and rest my fingertips on the jagged top. Four years have passed here since that night, and the ridges are still so sharp. I vividly remember how the
each-uisge
dragged me into the river, the skin at my back sliced open on the vicious edge.

I swear I can see the stain of my blood on the rock, now rust-colored and faded to become part of the stone. My injury from that night took forever for the mechanical stitchers to close.

I still bear the scar, spanning from my neck to lower back. My badge of survival. My first one. There was no returning to my old life after that. It's my brand now, a claim on my soul.
Falconer
.

“I tried to kill my first faery here, just after Sorcha murdered my mother,” I tell Aithinne. “I nearly died.”

Aithinne crouches in the water next to me, at ease despite the cold. It's as if she doesn't even notice how the water runs over her boots and dampens her trousers. Her gaze is like Kiaran's, so startling and intense.

This close, I notice a scar on her forehead just beneath her hairline. Long and thin, the mark is so faded it's barely noticeable. I wonder what might have caused it.

“Where I come from,” Aithinne says, resting her hand on the rock just over the bloodstain, “the first hunt is considered a trial. We call it
là na cruaidh-chuis
, the day of hardship. Before we come into our powers, every
daoine sìth
must go into the forest and kill a stag without a weapon, without our strength and speed, our mind connected to the animal.”

I'm beginning to realize how much Kiaran never told me about the fae. “I never knew that.”

Aithinne's smile is quick, fleeting. “No human does,” she says. “During my own hunt, I saw through the stag's eyes. A quickly turning world, limited in color but bursting with life. We ran together. We drank from a stream. For that day, I was a wild creature, untamed. But there came the moment I had to take its life.”

She closes her eyes, remembering. “I had my hands around its neck and felt everything it did—the press of my fingers, its struggle to breathe. I'll never forget when it sank its teeth into my shoulder, somehow managing to break the skin. I had never seen my own blood before.”

Aithinne stops and I wonder if she'll continue. I'm holding my breath. “What happened?”

“I understood the true purpose of the trial, my first hunt.” She raises her eyes to mine. “It teaches us what it means to be hunter and prey. To make the choice to kill or be killed.” With a firm grip on her shirt, Aithinne pulls the fabric down to bare her shoulder—the scar there, teeth marks pressed into her flawless skin. “Now we both carry that lesson with us, don't we, Falconer?”

She pushes to her feet and I follow her down the river a ways. “Do some fae fail the trial?”

Aithinne walks with her hands in her pockets. Now that her injuries from the
mortair
have healed, she moves across the rocks with graceful speed and agility. “Aye. Others pass and only come out worse.” She glances at me. “Many
sìthichean
fear death, and yet they consider mortality to be a weakness. One that ought to be reserved for humans and the creatures of this realm alone. They learn the wrong lesson.”

“What's the right lesson, then?” I ask, curious now.

“In the end, we are all the stag,” she says simply.

We continue downstream. My injuries slow me down, but Aithinne is patient. Both of us are quiet for the longest time. It seems like hours go by. The winter sun is low on the horizon, shining its last vestiges of light through the skeletal branches.

We still don't speak. Our journey is filled with the roar of water falling over rocks, the soft rain pattering against stone and bare trees. Kiaran and I used to walk like this, lost in our thoughts, content with the silence.

Aithinne's presence is so different from his, less intense. Her eyes rove over the landscape as if she's memorizing every rock and tree and branch, as if she hungers to see more.

I've never seen anyone so entranced. Her step has a lightness that Kiaran's never did. Sometimes a small smile plays on her lips as if something has delighted her. Her fingertips brush the branches as we stride by, lingering on the trunks of the trees.

After all that time Aithinne spent in the mounds surrounded by dirt, it must be wonderful for her to walk aboveground again. I'm surprised that being trapped with enemy fae hasn't affected her the way it has me. That she could offer to take my memories as if the burden of them meant nothing at all.

There is nothing you went through that I haven't already endured. Lonnrach had two thousand years to break me and he never could
.

“How do you bear what Lonnrach did to you?” I whisper. It takes me a second to realize I've spoken aloud and I wince.

Aithinne heard me. She falters in the middle of a jump and loses her footing on a rock, splashing into the cold river water. In the last lingering bit of sunlight, I see her stricken expression, the way she curls her hands into fists at her sides so tightly that her knuckles are white.

“Aithinne?” When she doesn't answer, I try to apologize. What's
wrong
with me? “I'm sorry. I should never have—”

“Don't,” she snaps. Her shuddered breath slices through the air between us. I watch her struggle with the memory, not knowing what to do.
Wishing
I knew what to do. “Don't come near me.”

Drip. Drip
.
Oh god, blood from her closed fists hits the rocks by her feet.
Drip. Drip
.

I grasp her arms. The blood drips onto the rocks so fast now, streaming through her hands. “
Aithinne
.”

Aithinne stares at me. “I'm fine.” Her expression has gone cold, emotionless, and shut off. “It doesn't hurt,” she says mechanically, as if she's repeated it every day of her life.
It doesn't hurt
, I remember her whispering on the trail. Her mantra.

I stare at her dumbly for a moment, then take her hands and pry her fingers open. I can't help flinching at the sight. Her palm is marred with half-moon marks, dug so deep that the flesh is peeling away. Blood pools there, so dark against her pale skin.